Radiohead: The King of Limbs

“I’m such a tease and you’re such a flirt…” The most important band in the world has returned with another cure for the malaise of the age. Pick one: They’ve saved rock and roll, killed rock and roll, and still emerged from the muck of the music industry well ahead of the curve. Everyone in media keeps them under the microscope to see how they will win. Again. Lean in, here’s the secret:

Radiohead makes great records.

And they do it consistently. They’re also quite adept at parsing the patterns on the horizon of the mediascape, but that wouldn’t matter if their records weren’t good. Damn good.

The King of Limbs is no exception. It’s more mellow than the sparsest parts of Amnesiac, but not nearly as insular. It might be their most even record. Thom Yorke’s voice, which I have to admit used to grate on me as often as it moved me, has gotten mature enough to carry the toughest of tunes. He is the voice of Radiohead, literally and figuratively (no small task either way), and he handles it with confidence and control.

Radiohead was never as joyfully abrasive as Sonic Youth or The Flaming Lips, but The King of Limbs reminds me of the releases of the former’s A Thousand Leaves and the latter’s The Soft Bulletin. All three records are still weird in their ways, but they’re also far more subtle than the previous work of their creators. Radiohead have always been masters of subtlety, and with The King of Limbs, they’ve earned their Ph.D. It’s both such a tease and such a flirt.